Action

ORGANIZATIONS

Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions
An excellent NGO with offices around the world and numerous excellent publications. COHRE’s main focus is to expose and fight forced evictions and to advocate for ‘housing rights for all, everywhere’. It is in the forefront of the struggle to give squatters rights in international and national law and is currently trying to bring ‘crimes against humanity’ charges against Robert Mugabe for the mass evictions in Zimbabwe last year.
83 Rue de Montbrillant, 1202 Geneva, Switzerland; tel: +41 22 734 1028;
web: http://www.cohre.org>

Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) A coalition of housing rights groups and people active across Asia. The ACHR newsletter Housing by People is a good place to start when looking at anything from slum self-help to anti-eviction fights across the region. Its website is excellent.
73 Soi Sonthiwattana 4, Ladprao 110, Ladprao Rd, Bangkok 10310, Thailand;
tel: +66 2 538 0919; fax: +66 2 539 9950;
web: http://www.achr.net>

National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) One of the groups that spearheads the struggle for squatters’ rights in India, it has been built into one of the largest poor people’s organizations in the world.PO Box 9389 Mumbai 400 026, India;
tel: +91 22 2386 5053; fax: +91 22 2388 7566; web: http://www.sparcindia.org>.

PUBLICATIONS

Environment and Urbanization is the quarterly journal of the International Institute for Environment and Development. It has some of the best analysis and statistics on slum conditions and the struggles of squatters and slum dwellers for secure tenure and community upgrade.Contact: Human Settlements Programme, IIED, 3 Endsleigh Street, London, WC1HODD, England;
tel: +44 20 7388 2117;
fax: +44 20 7388 2826 Web: http://www.iied.org>

Shadow Cities: Robert Neuwirth’s highly readable account of two years living in squatter communities around the world. (Routledge, New York, 2005)

The Challenge of Slums: UN Habitat’s fact-packed overview of the state of the world’s slums (UN Habitat, Nairobi, 2003).

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